There’s a “New Snowden” Leaking National Security Information

It seems that canceling N.S.A. leaker Edward Snowden’s passport and keeping him in Russia under the threat of criminal prosecution should he ever return to the United States has not stopped sources within the national security community from leaking documents.

A report published Tuesday by the Intercept, the Web site launched by Snowden journalist Glenn Greenwald, relies on documents dated August 2013—after Snowden left the United States. The article in question, by Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Devereaux, tracks the growth of the Obama administration’s list of suspected terrorists.

“Of the 680,000 people caught up in the government’s Terrorist Screening Database,” Scahill and Devereaux write, “more than 40 percent are described by the government as having ‘no recognized terrorist group affiliation.’ That category—280,000 people—dwarfs the number of watchlisted people suspected of ties to al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah combined.”

CNN confirmed that U.S. officials believe a new leaker is sharing privileged national security information with journalists. Greenwald has been saying as much for quite some time. In announcing the Intercept’s launch in February, Greenwald wrote that the site’s first article “relies upon a new well-placed source, as well as new N.S.A. documents from the Snowden archive.” In a February appearance on CNN’s Reliable Sources, he also indicated that he believed new leakers will come forward.

Snowden downloaded his enormous cache of classified documents while working as a contractor at Booz Allen Hamilton. He met Greenwald, along with Laura Poitras and Ewan MacAskill, in Hong Kong, where he handed over the documents before heading to Russia in late June 2013. Snowden has repeatedly claimed that he did not take any government information with him to Russia.

The newly revealed documents are of a lower classification than those in the Snowden cache. The new information is characterized as “secret,” and is available via the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIRPNet). As Time’s Zeke Miller notes, that’s also the source of the information Chelsea Manning handed over to WikiLeaks. Snowden used the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System, which is open to a much smaller database of users.

U.S. officials aren’t exactly fond of Greenwald’s enterprising site. After the Intercept asked the government for comment prior to publishing its story on the growing list of suspected terrorists, the National Counterterrorism Center (N.C.T.C) tipped off an Associated Press reporter, Eileen Sullivan, who then published before the Intercept. After Intercept editor John Cook asked the N.C.T.C. why they spoiled the scoop, officials said they didn’t think Sullivan would publish first. “That was our bad,” an official reportedly said. Cook in turn reportedly said the Web site would give the government only 30 minutes to respond to future inquiries, and Greenwald suggested paring that down to 15 minutes, or not asking for comment until after publication.

Leaking information has become increasingly risky under the Obama administration, which has demonstrated a willingness to prosecute leakers and chilled relationships with the press. The president has used the Espionage Act to prosecute more leakers and whistle-blowers than all previous administrations combined. On the other hand, efforts by organizations such as the A.C.L.U. and sites like the Intercept and even establishment outlets such as The Washington Post have promoted the use of encryption tools aimed at making disclosing information safer for both sources and journalists.

“Every person remembers some moment in their life where they witnessed some injustice, big or small, and looked away, because the consequences of intervening seemed too intimidating,” Snowden told Vanity Fair in May. “But there’s a limit to the amount of incivility and inequality and inhumanity that each individual can tolerate. I crossed that line. And I’m no longer alone.”